Harry pictured in 1996, courtesy of the Las Vegas Review-Journal

Harry Eugene Claiborne was born in McRae, Arkansas, and graduated from the Cumberland University School of Law in 1941. He often recounted a story that his acceptance to law school was due to the recommendation of a drunken snuff salesman he had met while hitchhiking [1]. He served for a time as a sergeant in the Army stationed in Santa Monica, California. Inspired by his father's stand against the KKK, Harry claims to have refused to go along with the internment of Japanese in camps, and was punished for doing so.

Harry dons judicial robes before being sworn in as a federal judge on Sept. 1, 1978

He was admitted to both the Arkansas and Nevada bars, and spent two years as a deputy prosecutor before becoming a well-known defense attorney in Las Vegas. A flamboyant attorney, Claiborne would frighten opposing counsel by carrying in large stacks of papers that he passed off as his evidence in the case. The papers in the folders often were blank. In the 1970s he represented famed entertainer Frank Sinatra in several of his legal battles with Vegas gaming officials. Harry ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 1964, losing in the Democratic primary. He was appointed a U.S. district court judge by President Jimmy Carter in 1978, on the recommendation of his former opponent, Senator Howard Cannon.

But in December of 1983 he was indicted by a federal grand jury for bribery, fraud, and tax evasion. In April 1984 the jury deadlocked and a mistrial was declared. He was tried again in July on only the evasion charges and was found guilty the next month, making him the first federal judge ever convicted of crimes while on the bench. He was sentenced to two years in prison in October, and was in prison from May 1986 to October 1987. Harry long maintained he was too busy on the bench to pay close attention to his tax return, noting he never even looked at the document until his accountant brought it to him. "I asked how much I owed, and I wrote a check" [2].

He was impeached by the United States House of Representatives on July 22, 1986, on two charges of tax evasion and one charge of bringing disrepute to the federal judiciary. He was convicted by the U.S. Senate on October 9, 1986, removing him from office. He was only the fifth man in U.S. history to be removed from office through impeachment by the U.S. Congress and the first since Halsted Ritter in 1936. At his impeachment hearing he told the Senate, "If they ever write down anything I've ever done in my whole life, they'll be able to say Harry Claiborne had a court in which the little citizen received a fair and just treatment from the bench" [3].

He was allowed to begin practicing law again in Nevada in 1987 and once again established himself as one of the nation's best defense lawyers. But on January 19, 2004 he shot himself to death in Las Vegas, Nevada, apparently due to his health battles with cancer and Alzheimer's disease. In a 1996 interview with the Las Vegas Sun, Claiborne said in a folksy Arkansas drawl, "My road through life has indeed been a rocky one, but, my God, it has been exciting -- I'm the lucky one" [4].

Pedigree Chart

						John B. Claiborne 12/30/1812 - 09/17/1874
				Arthur Smith Claiborne (1st) 2/3/1846 - 9/8/1936
						Perlina E. Thomason c. 1830 - 10/16/1870
		Arthur Smith Claiborne (2nd) 3/26/1885 - April 1962
				Martha Jane Hale 1/17/1852 - 10/12/1929
Harry Eugene Claiborne 7/2/1917 - 1/19/2004
		Minnie King 1/12/1889 - unknown

Descendants

Harry married (1st) Barbara Redfield and the pair had three children [5]:

1. Carol Ann (Claiborne) Johnson, born July 19, 1946 in Las Vegas, Nevada. She married (1st) Ronald Edward Martin (born April 26, 1946, Las Vegas, NV) on December 11, 1964 in Long Beach, California. The two had one child, Roni Renea Martin, who was born August 24, 1966.

   Carol Ann (Claiborne) Johnson	Roni Renea Martin

   Married (2nd) Harold Alan Gough Scott on October 26, 1980 in Las Vegas, Nevada (no children). Married (3rd) Merle Edward Johnson on September 1, 1995 in Little Rock, Arkansas (no children).

2. Left to right: Carol (Claiborne) Johnson, Janice (Claiborne) Kollander, Harry E. Claiborne, and Nancy Claiborne.

   Janice (Claiborne) Kollander, March 19, 1948, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Married (1st) Hans Ulrich (John) Rubin (born September 4, 1927 in Montreux, Switzerland) on July 20, 1971 in Reno, Nevada and divorced on May 7, 1974. The two had no children.

   Married (2nd) Robert Henry Muenzer (born July 4, 1948 in Chicago, Illinois) on October 5, 1974, in Pacific Palisades, California. Robert died June 26, 1995. The couple had two children:

   1. Christine Muenzer, born August 29, 1979, in Van Nuys, California. She married Tyler Heer, but is now divorced.
   2. Michael Christine Muenzer, born September 7, 1983, in Irvine, California

   Married (3rd) Ira Mikhael Kollander (born April 13, 1941 in New York City, NY) on April 26, 2003.

3. Dr. Nancy Claiborne

   Dr. Nancy Claiborne, born August 28, 1949 in Las Vegas, Nevada. A resident of Palatine Bridge, N.Y. Nancy is an associate professor at the University at Albany. There she serves as director for the Center for Human Services Research. Claiborne holds a Ph.D. from the University of Houston’s graduate school of social work (1998), as well as a M.S.W. from the University of Southern California (1982) with a concentration in community organization and public administration, and a B.S. in psychology from Portland State University (1976).

   Married (1st) Steven James Adams (born February 16, 1949, in Tillamook, Oregon) on October 1, 1970 in Eugene, Oregon, and divorced on April, 6, 1977.

   Married (2nd) Henry (Hank) Willard Vandenburgh (born April 28,1945 in Los Angeles, California) on August 16, 1997 in Friendswood, Texas. Hank has one child from a previous marriage to Michelle Feldman - Lilah Rose (born June 7, 1978 in Los Angeles, California).
   

References and Notes